Bestselling author Tom Clancy is the latest brand-name author to create digital copies of his work. At the same time, smaller companies like Soft Skull Press, Akashic Books, and Ugly Duckling Presse are all building e-book platforms with scarce resources.
According to Christian Science Monitor, these indie presses have sponsored the “most extensive restructuring efforts” on the digital book front, leading the industry in the race to digitize book lists.
Here’s an excerpt from the article by Matthew Shaer: “[T]he Association of American Publishers noted that e-book business had more than doubled for the month, to $5.1 million. Over the course of the year, e-book sales were up 63.8 percent. It is in these figures that many industry analysts see hope for the publishing industry at large, which is turning slowly — and not without some grumbling — toward mass digitization.”